Chapter Nineteen
“You bought my house.”
Eve was standing in the middle of the living room, bag already dropped on the floor next to her.
Darius, having finished checking all the rooms to make sure they were clear again, scooped the bag back up. He nodded.
“The man who was using it as a rental retired and went to Florida. He sold it to me at a good price, and I’ve been working here and there on it when I have the time ever since.”
Eve’s eyes and mouth were both wide.
Darius left her to her surprise and backtracked to the first room on the left.
He heard her footfalls hurrying behind him but didn’t stop until he was inside the bedroom and in front of its closet. He unzipped her duffel bag before reaching for some hangers that were plastic-wrapped in the corner.
His shoulder pulled a little at the movement, but he was more interested in the woman currently standing behind him.
Darius had never once felt weird about buying the house next door. In fact, it had seemed a must for him the second he had seen the For Sale sign. However, he also hadn’t expected the girl who used to live in it to come back and find out.
At least, not the way she had.
Now he tried to look at her reaction while busying his hands with her clothes.
“You bought my house and…you kept my room.” She pointed to the old bed frame and then the nightstand between it and the wall. “That’s mine. I mean, it was mine. Dad built it for me, but we didn’t have the room to take it in the move. We put it by the side of the road, right?”
Eve had never been a particularly sentimental girl when it came to material things, but on that day right before they moved, Darius had seen her cry.
When she had gone to the store with her dad later that afternoon, Darius had hurried to grab the piece of furniture before squirreling it away in their shed.
Kid Darius didn’t know what he would do with it, but he knew he didn’t like seeing her cry over it.
“The previous owner kept the frame, and I kept the nightstand.” Darius shrugged. “Refurbishing them saved me money in the long run. You can’t argue with saving money, right?”
Eve’s footsteps were moving farther away. Darius took a folded shirt from her bag and placed it on the first hanger. He glanced over his shoulder at her as he hung it up.
She had her hand placed on the nightstand’s top.
“You kept this to save money but bought my house? Sounds like you lost money to me.”
Darius found the second folded shirt. It was blue and worn. A T-shirt with a logo that had long since faded. He could smell the fabric softener on it.
It was nice.
“After buying my house, buying this one seemed like a good investment,” he defended. “It is, as you might have noticed, right next door after all. Not only a good investment but an easy one to manage, since all I have to do to see it is look out of the window.”
He put the shirt on the hanger and then went back to the duffel for another. There were two pairs of pants, all bunched-up together. Darius took both pairs out. He walked them over to the dresser against the wall. He wasn’t going to point out that it was his childhood dresser.
Eve might not have been sentimental about these things, but Darius had surprised himself with his own soft spot for them. He had seen her old nightstand and couldn’t help but feel like it needed something to match it.
What better piece of furniture than something from his childhood too?
“And no one knows you own it? Mitchell being held here was a coincidence?” Eve was standing in front of the window. The curtains over it were drawn save for a sliver between. The world outside had grown hazy and dark from an overcast sky. Still, she stood in the small strand of light and gazed out.
Darius finished putting her pants away before he answered, careful with his words.
“Mitchell being taken here, if I had to guess, was an act of opportunity since this place has been empty,” he said.
“Other than the sheriff and his friend who was the Realtor before he moved, the purchase didn’t get broadcasted like other news seems to around here.
The fact that Seven Roads has been through a lot through the last few years helped too, I’m sure.
” He laughed a little. “Compared to the rest of town, I’ve been the least interesting one here.
If the gossip mill has found out, no one has shared the info.
Who cares if the grumpy detective buys an empty house? ”
Darius’s attention had already slipped back to the duffel he had placed on top of the dresser. The next items he could see inside were small, black and cotton. He was already wondering if it was right for him to put them away when he heard the floor squeak a little behind him.
Two arms wrapped around his back. Eve fastened her hands at his chest to close the circuit.
Then all he felt was warmth.
The warmth of Eve as she burrowed into his back and flattened her cheek against his shoulder blade.
Her voice was small.
“I care.”
Silence overlapped the two simple words. One wave coming to shore before returning to the sea. Strong, natural and then gone.
Darius took a moment to enjoy the wave before it crashed.
He put his hand over hers.
The heat came on in the living room, its buzz soft but noticeable.
Darius’s phone made noise next, also soft but noticeable.
He patted her hand. She let him go.
The caller was Rose. He turned to Eve before answering the phone.
“I know you’re worried about being found here, but I promise you we’re safe now,” he said. “This place is ours.”
He meant to say it was their secret.
He didn’t amend his words, though.
Instead, Darius watched as Eve nodded, a small frown at odds with the cuteness of her fuzzy little sweater.
“I trust you,” she said.
Darius nodded in turn.
He excused himself to the living room, past the spot where Mitchell had been held the night before, past the living room window that looked out at his house, and answered the phone.
He listened to every word Rose said next, but part of him was still in the bedroom, Eve pressed against him in the quiet.
THERE WAS AN upset at the hospital as the afternoon rolled around.
Apparently, the woman who was hired to come after them was tougher than she looked.
After the surgery she’d had on the wrist that Darius had broken, she had tried to escape.
Not only had she tried to do so without a weapon but also while still coming down off anesthesia.
The deputy assigned to her had been able to disable her before she could get on the elevator.
“If she hadn’t tried so hard to kill us, I would be impressed,” Eve decided, toothbrush in hand.
The afternoon haze had officially dissolved into the night, and Darius had finally called it quits. No more phone calls, no more researching, no more compulsively checking the security cameras on the house or the one next door.
Now it was just the two of them getting ready for bed.
“And for that same reason, I’m astounded that we still have no idea who she is,” he said, putting his own toothbrush back into its holder.
While Darius had spent most of the day on the phone, Eve had spent some of her time walking the same floors she had as a little girl.
Much like his own childhood home, Darius had changed everything save a few pieces of the familiar.
The tired carpet had been updated to hardwood.
The guest bathroom had been painted and the hardware updated.
The kitchen cabinets had been replaced and a fairly new refrigerator stood where their less-than-aesthetically pleasing former one had stood.
The room that had once belonged to her father had a new bedroom suite, along with curtains that were as subtle as the new wall color.
There were still some signs that the en suite was being updated, but even still nothing in it fit the memory Eve had of the room.
It was only the first bedroom on the left that she recognized with one foot in the past and one in the present.
And Eve had no idea how to feel about any of it.
Darius had bought her home and saved parts of her childhood.
What did that mean?
Did he still feel like he owed her for what had happened at the warehouse when they were kids? Had some kind of misguided guilt led him to make such a drastic decision?
Or was it really about an easy investment?
Eve huffed now at the reflection in the bathroom’s mirror.
Darius must have thought it had to do with their current predicament. He walked past her to the bedroom.
“Don’t worry,” he said, oblivious to the almost-constant series of questions she had been listening to on repeat in her head since the discovery. “She might be good, but I’m better. We’ll figure out who she is.”
Eve trailed behind him, nodding.
She followed him into the guest bedroom, still nodding.
When he pulled back the covers and slid into the bed, she stopped.
Her eyebrow arched high. He caught the confusion and returned a small eye roll.
“I figured it would save you some time and energy by starting out in the same bed instead of having you creep around later.” He grabbed the covers next to him and pulled them away from the sheets. “You can go ahead and just start at the end.”
He was right, of course.
There had been no way—great love epiphany or not—that Eve was going to sleep a wink without having Darius beside her. She hadn’t even napped earlier despite his insistence.
Yet she hadn’t actually thought about what that meant until now.
Or, really, how she felt about it now that she had finally realized that her love for the man was no longer just loyalty or friendship.
Instead it was her—a woman very much aware of how that boy had grown up well—about to slide in next to him in bed wearing her little PJ set and no makeup, and swimming in a lot of feelings.
Darius was back to looking at his phone, texting someone. Eve used the distraction to hurry to her place. She pulled the covers up to her chin. Darius continued to go through his phone.